Faces of Latter-day Saint Women
A Conversation with JalShalley Lynch
JalShalley Lynch first met the missionaries while on a smoke break at work, and she asked them so many questions that the elders missed their next appointment. In March 2004, she joined the LDS Church. Strong-minded, honest, and ready to laugh, Shalley—sometimes known on the streets as Pooh—was born and raised in Washington D.C. She collects wigs and shoes and is completely comfortable in front of a camera. Her advice for gorgeous photos: “Just loosen up. Just know you look good. Practice your poses in the mirror to find your good side.” She is married and has a four-year-old daughter, Ziyah, who loves church. Shalley says, “Ziyah don’t care too much about when we all sit there, but the second part, where she go to class? She can’t wait to get home and show her daddy what she did in class.”
Shalley began our interview by talking about her conversion to the gospel of Jesus Christ. At the time she met the missionaries, she was “going from church to church,” avoiding the ones that she describes as “just a fashion statement, where they judge me for my purse before they even get to know me.” In contrast, Shalley is exuberant about being Latter-day Saint: “You know, I love my church. I just get so much love with just bare me, versus trying to be hot and trying to be bad and fit in on this end.”
But that doesn’t mean it was easy.
“The missionaries asked me to pray to see if the Church was true or if it was right for me, and pray about the Book of Mormon. I prayed, but it took me a long time to get an answer. It took me awhile to read the Book of Mormon, but when I got to the parable of “plant a seed”—you know the parable I mean?—that’s when I got my answer. I lived a rough life before, so planting the seed was like growing something new. So you plant the seed within yourself. You watch it sprout. You watch how things in your life and in your household are going so much better.
“I was in the streets. I was raised in the projects and it’s hard just comin’ up fighting always. It’s just, they mean and negative in every perspective you can be mean and negative. [For instance], fightin’ all the time. Like, my attitude was just limited, so fragile. I’d just get upset. From me fighting all the time, that’s how I’d get so known in the streets . . . like don’t-nobody-play-with-me type, ’cause they already know I’m good with my hands. I lived Satan’s way and now I’m trying to live the Lord’s way. That’s as plain as I can put it. I just did a total flip, from bad to good.
“Where I’m at now—’cause I constantly think about that parable—is the seed’s planted. The stem part came out, but it’s like I’m not giving it room enough to blossom, to sprout. I’m not feeding it well enough, right now, in these latter days, for it to open up and blossom so beautiful.”
She advises other women who are also struggling to make changes in their lives to “put they shoulder to the wheel push along.”
“You know that song? Yeah, just keep pushing, ’cause you trying to change your life, that’s what like I’m going through . . . but it’s hard. You have to wanna do it . . . and have faith while you’re doing it . . . Just don’t never give up. When you give up completely, that’s when the enemy know he got you. He won. You know, ‘She weak!’ So that’s what I’m fighting against. Not giving him that upper hand.”
Shalley embraces the diversity of the Church in Washington D.C. “I noticed when I’m in church, the way that I express myself is different from a lot of the members. I had a lot of neighbors who had been members all their life come up to me and tell me I ask good questions and stuff. Like they didn’t even think about it that way. [I] make them see a different point of view . . . It ain’t just an all-white church or an all-black church or all Hispanic-church—it’s everybody’s church. You know, the Lord give everybody a chance, . . . anybody could be a Mormon.”
Part of “growing something new” in her life has been a new harvest of heroes. “You know, now in life, I pick Church members. But at first, when I was comin’ up, I used to say my mother, cause she raised us by herself. It was three of us. I was the only girl. And she really . . . it was a struggle for raising us. It was a struggle. You know, my older brother took on the responsibility while she went to work so, while we stayin’ there, and being the only girl in the house, I looked up to her. But now, it’s like I pick Church members to look up to because they just got so much good goin’ for them. It’s just like no matter what, they just keep they faith alive, they just keep they faith there. They just know even though bad approaches them, who gonna help them in the long run, basically. So that’s how I wanna be when all the bad, evil things and temptations, and all of this approaches me and try to take me down to my lowest point, I know that good will come about, so I just pick members of the Church to try to look up to.”
Becoming a member of the Church also prompted wardrobe changes, and when pressed for a tip, Shalley reveals: “I’ll give you one of my secrets. I like to wear my tank top shirts for skirts. ’Cause you know now in church we can’t wear tank tops to show our arm, cause we need the sleeve one, right? But I had so many when I joined the Church so I start wearing them overtop of my jeans for skirts.”
Like many new members, Shalley wants to share what she has found with those she loves. And while none of her friends or family have joined her at church, she hasn’t given up hope.
“I can get [my friends] to just about follow me to do anything in the streets that’s negative. When I’m ready to go fight someone, I can round up all my girls—there’s thirteen of us . . . But here I am now, in the Church, and want them to come follow me and do something that’s positive . . . But it didn’t happen. The closest I got was bringing one of my friend’s kids to church.
“I just look at it like, if I can get at least two of them to come in to be a part of the Church, we learn together the gospel. We can strengthen each other. ’Cause we know how it is to be out there in the streets. It ain’t a Sunday— it’s like a Tuesday or Wednesday.”
“The best thing about being a black woman in the Church? I’d say that it’s good to start in my family. Feels like I’m getting something started.”
Raised in the northwoods of Canada without electricity or a phone, Johanna’s biggest challenge when she moved to Utah to attend BYU was falling asleep with the sound of the refrigerator humming. She has a BA in Linguistics, dreams of making her own artisan cheeses, and refuses to let her husband spray chemicals on the lawn. She lives in Pocatello, Idaho, with him and their daughter on five weedy, beautiful acres.
